Reason 4

Propellerhead's Reason 4 is such an amazingly versatile program that it's been given it's own heading directly under music software in the home recording studio store navigation. Reason 4 can't be simply called a drum machine, a synthesizer, a looper, or a sampler because it all of those things and more.

If you combine Reason 4 with an audio interface, a quality audio mixing program (such as Pro Tools), a midi keyboard, and a couple of good mics and you are well on your way to being able to create a high quality recording. Of course you'll need a good computer as well. Don't try to run all of this great software on an outdated computer with 512 MB of RAM, that will not work well.